


tempted as we are

by oceansinmychest



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Light Sadism, One Shot, Season/Series 02, Tainted, Toxicity, Twisted, in the greenhouse, reflections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 01:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Mrs. Waterford asks to see Offred in her greenhouse.Infatuation and obsession become hers just as they were Commander Waterford’s. Serena Joy grasps the handmaid by the jaw.





	tempted as we are

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two for their complexities. I enjoy this ship, as twisted as it is. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Though all the nation’s resources have been used up, Serena Joy aspires to create life anew. Her greenhouse promises sanctuary. Fred seldom enters her crystal palace. Instead, he prefers to hold dominion over their home despite all the legislation they pushed _together_. To this day, it grates on her. Lot’s wife should have stayed behind.

In the greenhouse, she finds her reprieve. The light that filters in seems tainted somehow. Bleak and dim, it echoes her future. Grime coats the ceiling. There’s no mosaic of color that seeps akin to a stained-glass window. Surrounded by allegory, she focuses on physical sensations. Returned to the earth, her fingers find the clammy texture of soil. It gets under her nails though she doesn't seems phased, now dirty from the inside out.

Serena pries a mint leaf off a stem, inhaling the scent, and missing her sweet menthol fix. Quitting is a pain. How she craves the toxic taste of a cigarette. She craves a taste of Riesling. She craves the taste of Commander Waterford’s lips. No, that last part is wrong. She’s always been a selfish woman. Self-inflicted, she brings this onto herself. The orchids seldom bloom. Too finicky with moisture, they show signs of wilt. It frustrated Serena to see her garden die before her condescending eyes.

Gray mold returns. A parasite wastes away purple petals. Her mood dampens like the humid air within. It’s no wonder why orchids are her favorite. As a symbol of virility and a featured muse in Georgia O’Keefe’s work, Serena took a liking to the flower. Profanity breezes past her lips. In privacy, the act feels cathartic. In public, her tongue would be removed.

The fungus works its way through her garden. She tests the fan clipped to the redwood frame. In frustration, the Commander’s wife pinches the bridge of her nose.

In the kitchen, Rita’s words play like a record - the kind June and Luke used to listen to - except the lyrics are wrong: _Mrs. Waterford wants to see you._ Flour coats the Martha’s hands. She wrings them in her doughy apron.

“Mrs. Waterford,” the handmaid says all whilst feigning compliance.

Talk about a Sampson and Delilah situation.

Irritated, Serena tenses. Preoccupied by a terracotta pot hosting the latest source of her fascination, she ignores the woman behind her, her cap shielding her face. She nicks herself on the thorny stem of a wilting rose. Hissing, Serena brings her thumb to her lips. She suckles the droplet of blood. Tastes iron and womanhood.

“Did you know, Offred, that Revelation remarks on how the faithless will burn in a lake of fire?”

She misses the days of preaching. A woman scorned projects her hate onto others. This life is penitence. Her vision’s been skewed by men.

All this talk of virtue gets wasted.

Serena turns to face her adversary. Red and blue make for issued uniforms. The differentiation tears them apart all the more.

Offred is not a watered-down version of Serena Joy. No, June encapsulates the defiance she once possessed. Thorny, wild, and rebellious, June steels herself. It’s her curved nose versus Serena’s elven one. Serena’s straw blonde hair versus her ashen blonde. Her watery blue eyes versus Serena’s dark blue ones. Woman against woman.

She’s a vessel, an unbroken egg, the holiest thing in all of Gilead. It fills Serena with sick loathing. How many nights has she imagined poisoning her?

 _I have nothing._ Serena Joy sourly thinks to herself.

The handmaid has taken her home, her husband, her fertility. She should have risked deadly nightshade to slip into Offred’s meals after a smooth delivery. Yet, Serena Joy doesn’t have to be a part of the disease, she can be the cure.

“Were you always a preacher?” June fires away, unable to quell a mother’s grief.

She’s seen her daughter and now she wants more. Offread has a beautiful girl: a delightful cherub prancing about this Garden of Eden. Yet, like all good things, the vision fades. Serena wants a daughter to call her own. Not a boy, never a man. She will raise her child to be clever, to love, to survive, to fill the void in her heart.

“Were you always ignorant?” Serena counters. So much acidity falls from her mouth.

She yearned to know what was behind that hidden door. Fred cruelly shut her out. Now, she makes do in an attempt to decode this pound of licentious flesh.

What made her any different from a wicked queen, envious of a maiden’s beauty and fertility?

Serena Joy has spent her childhood grooming her peers - always below her - brushing their hair, coddling them like pets and prized possessions despite her venomous words. She liked to watch them cry. How she wished that Offred would cry.

She imagines the taste of those tears: salty, bittersweet.

The spider approaches. She closes in on the handmaid, daring to unfasten the cap that once hide her face. For an adulterer, she’s pretty, Serena realizes. Her tongue clings to the roof of her mouth, her cheeks hollowed. She thinks herself a threat here. Serena has woven her web, but now she’s tangled within the silken strands. This revelation is false: Offred has her.

Infatuation and obsession become hers just as they were Commander Waterford’s. Serena Joy grasps the handmaid by the jaw. Serena feels her heart beat, her blood flow. She doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t give her the satisfaction of fear. Envy makes her ugly. 

“At least say my name,” Offred declares, as tart as ever.

Her fruit rots while Offred’s flower blooms.

_Fuck her._

“June” sounds tainted, hollow, a spit.

A hollow hunger twists her stomach. Again, her thumb oozes. A crimson streak smears across Offred’s jawline. She forms the sign of the cross. Cements the bond in her own blood.

“You shall be holy, for I am holy,” Serena chants in a voice roughened by smoke and communion wine (white, she prefers in the comfort of summer nights).

June **hates** her. That much is evident.

“You’re going to have my child,” she goes on to vow, her thin lips ghosting over the shell of Offred’s ear. The flowers are neglected, forgotten, in the hopes of a child sprouting in that fertile womb.

Autonomy lost, her hungry heart pollutes. The kiss on her forehead is chaste, reminiscent of some perverted, Eucharistic anointment.


End file.
